I was going to start this topic, but did not want to be labelled as ungrateful from those outside the industry for our cheap fares.
Now I may be a cynic but is this just one more subtle way to p!ss staff off and maybe hasten the departure of some people who may have been thinking of leaving the place already.
GD says this is because fuel costs will increase by $400-600 million. Now I am being extremely generous here, but even if this levy on staff travel raised $1 million it would still be a drop in the ocean and would not be noticed on the balance sheet. Which proves to me they just want to p!ss off staff.
Staff travel must already make a decent profit for them as we are just filling empty seats. So for example on a flight to LAX with 10 staff there is an extra $2500 they would have if the staff were upgradeable. This is money they would not have otherwise so I can not see how this costs them.
If times at QF are that tough that we need a fuel surcharge on staff tickets, perhaps we should just close up the business as obivously there is no money in it and QF will soon be broke. As I said earlier perhaps I am just a cynic.